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Greenville native swept away by icy sport of curling

It would seem a most unlikely scenario. A South Carolina boy grows up to fall in love with a sport that can only be played on thick sheets of ice. But Beau Welling has never really followed convention — he’s a physics-trained architect after all — and curling is not your average sport. Just ask Welling.

It would seem a most unlikely scenario. A South Carolina boy grows up to fall in love with a sport that can only be played on thick sheets of ice. But Beau Welling has never really followed convention — he’s a physics-trained architect after all — and curling is not your average sport. Just ask Welling.

“In a weird way it is something that is melting-pottish,” Welling says with a gleam in his eye. “It involves making friendships and bringing people together from other parts of the world, but it’s also very thinking-oriented. And it’s different.”

Welling is now a man on a mission. The 43-year-old started the Palmetto Curling Club in June 2010. The organization has grown, thanks, in part, to a burgeoning international community, more attention from the Olympics and to Welling’s efforts. The man is not just spreading the gospel locally; he’s going national and international with his message as a U.S. representative to the World Curling Federation.

Why is Welling, a Greenville native and J.L. Mann graduate whose day job as a golf course designer and owner of Beau Welling Design LLC keeps him uber-busy, so adamant about sharing the joys of curling?

Welling surely will give you a technical answer if you prefer, but the simple one is because it’s fun.

“I’m a learner. I like to learn and discover new things,” Welling says. “I’m very passionate about that, so I think curling very much fits into all of that.”

Curling as a sport didn’t get its Olympic debut until 1988, during the Calgary games. And even then, it was only as a demonstration sport. Welling recalls watching it and being curious about the sport he’d never heard of.

It involves players sliding stones across a sheet of ice toward a target. The game has elements of shuffleboard and the French game of boules. Two teams of four people take turns sliding granite stones towards a target. Points are given for getting the closest.

Curling teams use brooms to help create a path for the stone that will direct it toward its target. As a result, the game requires a lot of close teamwork and strategy.

“So I go out of my way to learn about it and I see rocks and ice and brooms,” Welling says of his initial exposure to curling in 1988. “And I think, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. This makes no sense.”

Welling forgot about the sport until 2002, and the Salt Lake City Winter Games. He became mesmerized and ended up watching the coverage 24/7. Turns out a colleague at the firm he worked at then had grown up curling in Ontario, and he became Welling’s de facto resource for all things about the sport.

Welling’s interest grew, and by the Turin Olympics in 2006, he had become hooked on the sport that once he found ridiculous. This is where fate intervened.

Welling was, by then, determined to see curling in action. The U.S. National Curling Championships were to be held in Bemidji, Minn., two weeks following the Olympics, but Welling was scheduled to be in Europe on a business trip then. So, he figured, that’s it. But the trip got canceled.

So Welling went to Minnesota, arriving at a place that “might as well be the North Pole.” His reputation had preceded him, because everyone wanted to meet the guy who came all the way from South Carolina.

During the nine days of the championships, Welling was wined and dined and taken on ice-fishing outings. And he fell deeper in love with curling.

“What you quickly learn is it’s a sport very much built around camaraderie and friendship,” Welling says. “So you end up getting to meet all these different type people who just have this passion for this sport.”

Welling has spent the past three years developing a network for the sport here in the Upstate. The Palmetto Curling Club now meets regularly on Tuesday nights and boasts organized teams, leagues and official curling stones that have come all the way from Aisla Craig, Scotland. All official stones are made from the granite gleaned from the island.

As the club has grown, so has the need for space. Upstate South Carolina just doesn’t have enough ice. That means Tuesday night play is limited to 32 players at a time — eight teams of four players each.

Welling sees potential to build a curling facility that could be used seasonally for other activities. Already, he says, the club is discussing converting an existing property. If the Palmetto Curling Club succeeds, its facility would become the first of its kind in the South.

“I think we’ve got a decent chance of making that happen,” Welling says. “It’s not an easy possibility. It’s kind of a crazy possibility with a lot of crazy looks.”

But if Welling’s own curling story says anything about him or the sport, it’s that when they are involved together, anything is possible.

GET CURLING

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The Palmetto Curling Club will offer several free open houses to introduce people to the sport, at 7:30-8:30 p.m. Tuesday and Feb. 25, and 5 p.m. March 8.